Fire phone, Amazon’s Android-based smartphone, allows you to reimagine your app and delight your customers through new groundbreaking experiences. Fire phone is available to customers in the US, UK and Germany. Fire apps can take advantage of the new Dynamic Perspective and Firefly SDKs - two new breakthrough technologies that allow customers to see and interact with the world through a whole new lens. You can also easily integrate existing Amazon APIs, including In-App Purchasing, Mobile Ads, and Mobile Associates.

If you have existing Android or HTML5 apps, you can easily and quickly get your app up on Fire phone. Most Android phone apps will already work on Fire. To determine your app’s compatibility, simply submit your app using our updated testing service and get compatibility test results within 90 seconds. If you register for a free developer account, you can also use the testing service to test your app’s look and feel and get the results in less than 6 hours.

Jump to the following sections to learn more:

Dynamic Perspective

Dynamic Perspective is an entirely new technology that responds to the way a customer holds, views, and moves the phone. With the Dynamic Perspective SDK, you can use the Dynamic Perspective sensors to create new interactions never seen before in apps and games. The Dynamic Perspective SDK includes a rich set of APIs and Controls to help developers incorporate peek, tilt and zoom capabilities within their apps, create immersive game play or provide quick navigation menus by allowing customers to tilt the device left or right. Amazon’s new Dynamic Perspective technology uses four ultra-low power specialized cameras, four infrared LEDs, a dedicated custom processor, real-time computer vision algorithms, and a custom power-efficient graphics rendering engine to track head movements in real time. Learn More.

Firefly

With the Firefly SDK, developers can build apps that recognize real world objects - QR and bar codes, artwork, songs, movies and more - and let customers interact with them. Firefly combines Amazon's deep catalog of physical and digital content with multiple image, text and audio recognition technologies to quickly identify over 100 million movies, TV episodes, songs and products. It can also recognize URLs, email addresses and phone numbers. Customers simply press the Firefly button to discover helpful information and take action in seconds. You can use the Firefly SDK to supplement item identification or build actionable options for customers after an item is recognized. For example, iHeartRadio used the Firefly SDK’s built-in music recognizer and music database to identify a song playing. Then they built their own Firefly action to create a station based on the song Firefly recognized. Learn More.

Get Started by Testing Your App

Fire is based on the latest version of Fire OS, 3.5. Android app compatibility is supported on Fire OS, so if an app runs on Android it can run on Fire with little or no effort. Simply drag and drop your Android APK and receive feedback on your app's compatibility within 90 seconds. You will also have access to additional Fire phone test results that enable you to see how your app looks and performs on Fire phone. The test results are presented in 6 hours and include carousel, peek and tilt actions. If you haven't registered for a developer account yet, you can create a free account here and get started with testing your app's experience and Fire.

Monetization Services

Amazon’s merchandising and easy payment options are built into Fire, enabling customers to take advantage of the convenient shopping experience they know and trust with Amazon. According to an IDC study, many developers building apps and games for Kindle Fire experience revenue parity with other mobile platforms. Specifically, 74% of the developers said that Average Revenue per App/User is the same or better than other platforms. Monetize your apps with:

Mobile Ads: For more details on the Amazon Mobile Ad Network, click here.

In-App Purchasing: Sell digital content and subscriptions, including in-game currency and more, from within your apps.

Mobile Associates: Offer physical and digital products in your apps and games while earning up to 6% on each purchase.

Fire APIs

The following chart lists the APIs included in each SDK as well as the supported technologies. All APIs are available in Java.